SO WHEN WILL IT BE MY TURN?

. . . I've answered this before - but as my turn gets closer I'm being asked again - and since referrals are my favourite thought at the moment I will speculate again.

There is some uncertainty about the timing of referrals due to Chinese New Year. The Chinese went on holiday yesterday - and won't return to work until the 26th. There's a very slim chance that they sent a small batch before leaving (I don't think that they did - but on this occasion I'd love to be wrong!) So I think that referrals will most likely come about 1 month from the last batch (which was early February) - with maybe a slight delay due to CNY.

This is my most likely scenario:

• Early March - normal sized batch (normal relating to the last year - not the old once a month referral of a month's worth of applications) that will get to 24th (hopefully, maybe even into the 25th).
• Early / mid April - normal batch with the cutoff of 31st Oct or 1st Nov.
  

As you can see I think I may scrape into the second batch, or not. I'm a natural pessimist and I'm trying to remain so - so that I don't get my hopes up too much. I believe that I should make the second cutoff (reason and logic leave the room at this point and emotion takes over!) and that I should have paperwork through by the end of the first week of next term (20th April) but the ticker actually relates to the 17th (told you that reason and logic had left!) The Easter holidays could be an extremely anxious time!

With the usual proviso - they can still say 'No' - but I'll be devastated if they do.